Nothing and Nowhere
by erolyn2
Summary: Jorah hides in Volantis after his wife's lover has banished him from her side.


**Disclaimer: **George R.R. Martin made these things up and I did not.

**AN:** Written for my friend Cassie's birthday. She requested Jorah-in-Volantis fic (pre-series, after Lynesse and her lover have kicked him out of Lys), so here it is.

* * *

This was the first bed Jorah Mormont had seen in days, yet still he did not sleep.

Two weeks ago he had sailed from Lys to Volantis on the first ship he could find, working among the deck crew in exchange for passage away from the island city. The few coins he had left from the Bravvosi campaign might keep him for a month or two in the vast city - and there would be room there to hide, lest Ormullen's men decide to come looking for him.

It irked him still that she had not bothered to speak the words to his face. Instead he'd returned from months of fighting to find a note in their bed, and when he'd gone to Ormullen's manse to find her the merchant prince and answered in her stead. As though he were a jilted lover and not her husband. As though he had taken all from _her_, driven _her_ to poverty, when everything he had done had been for her sake, for their marriage. _For nothing._

At least he had not yet passed his most recent wages on to her before he had been banished from the city.

_Banished_. Was there a more stinging word? The irony had not escaped him; exiled from Westeros for her sake, and now banished from her side.

Perhaps he should have known from the beginning. Perhaps it had been childish to expect that love would conquer all, that a poor homely knight could sweep a fair maiden off her feet and carry her away and live happily ever after. _The Bear and the Maiden Fair. _A tavern bawdy - not even a proper song. What sort of a fool would believe in something so idiotic? Perhaps, in nearly forty years of life, he had truly learned nothing.

From his window, Jorah could hear shouts and singing, jeers and jests, the trumpet of elephants. A soft glow of flames flickered against the opposite wall - fire dancers, he supposed, accompanying the jugglers he'd seen on the way in. Some sort of festival or religious celebration; it mattered not. He wanted none of it. Volantis was only a place to hide. Nowhere he could travel would bring him back to his island alive, to his keep, to Maege's scowls and Dacey's grins. No words would put Longclaw in his hands again, or restore his lordship, or bring his wife back to his side.

Was there something else he could have done? Or was it inevitable that Leyton Hightower's daughter would never love the Lord of Bear Island, no matter how many tourneys he won? Would she never have been happy in the cold, stern North, no matter how many jewels and cooks he bought? Lord Stark's Southron wife seemed happy enough, but Jorah had nothing to give that could compare to Winterfell. _Not even sons and daughters_. Lady Catelyn had borne three in as many years as he and Lynesse had been wed, and still - nothing.

For a moment he wished he had never met her. Never begged her favor, never unseated Mallister and Frey and Blount, never asked the Old Man of Oldtown for her hand. But in his heart he did not wish it, not even for a moment. The worst thing of all, the thing that haunted him most, was the knowledge that he would have done it all again, would have given up everything for love, not matter the cost. Jorah Mormont was truly a fool, and always would be.

The flames danced along his wall, cutting through the dark. Sleep might have been impossible regardless of his wandering mind; the noise rising from the square seemed only to increase as the night wore on, and the threadbare mattress in his room on the fourth floor did not encourage peaceful slumber.

With a sigh, Jorah swung his legs over the side of the bed and strapped his sword belt around his waist. He turned the key in the door on instinct, though there was nothing inside the room of any value. Only his sword and a shrinking pouch of silver tied to his hip, and the shirt on his back. It was almost liberating, having nothing to lose and no one to mourn him. Only ghosts remained, casting shadows in the darkness, disappearing in the light of a new day.

Perhaps he would see what a fool could find in the oldest and largest of the Free Cities.


End file.
